


Music Man

by Vashti (tvashti)



Series: Pack a Smile [5]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Mercy Thompson Series - Patricia Briggs
Genre: 2016 TwistedShorts Ficathon, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Betrayal, Canon Character of Color, Community: twistedshorts, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Feels, Gen, Musicians Talking Music, Native American Character(s), Pack Dynamics, The Marrok - Freeform, Twisting The Hellmouth Fic-a-Day, Unintentional Intimidation, werewolf behavior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-12-12 16:17:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11740653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tvashti/pseuds/Vashti
Summary: Bran terrorizes Oz.  He doesn't mean to.





	Music Man

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the August 2016 TwistedShorts ficathon on livejournal.

The last leg of the ride to Aspen Creek, Montana was...tense. More tense. For Oz, anyway.

Charles' words "This is Bran, my father. The Marrok." were still echoing in the back of Oz's head even after picking up the conversation he himself had interrupted to make introductions. Now he knew why his mom and Aunt Maureen, her sister, were such sticklers for being polite things like. You never knew who you were making idle pop culture conversation with. Maybe if he'd remembered his manners five hours ago...

"What do you think of Darling Violetta?" Bran, the Marrok, asked.

Luckily, the front of Oz's brain was still engaged. He was a little slow on the uptake but he was in close quarters with the two most powerful werewolves in North America, and he was still stringing together whole sentences. He was alive. Slow on the uptake was totally a thing they could all deal with.

"Pretty cool," Oz said eventually. He felt like his mouth was working on delay. "Played the same venue a couple of times. They were all really nice. I can never get a sense of who they are, though. The music I mean." Also, he was rambling. For him at least. "They always remind me of someone else."

"Yeah! Nice to know it's not just me."

"Nah, not just you, man. Sir."

Bran twisted around in his seat in a way that was vaguely unsettling. Oz was strongly reminded of the moment, just an hour past, when Bran had turned in the seat to shake Oz's hand after Charles' introduction. "Don't worry about it," the Marrok said now, college student persona all gone. "At least not for now."

Something must have shown on Oz's face, although he didn't register any changes, because the Marrok's lips thinned for a moment before he turned around again.

Or maybe that sour note Oz scented in the close air of the rental car was him.

* * *

"How do you know the current Slayer?" the Marrok asked.

They--the Marrok, Charles and Oz--were in a motel room in Aspen Creek that smelled strongly of cleaning products and steel. The motel itself was rustic and quaint, making the room seem spartan and cold in comparison.

Oz felt like he should be asking questions, of himself if no one else, but it was like there was a vacancy where his curiosity should be.

Gingerly seated on the edge of the bed (it was the only furniture in the room and, really, sitting on the floor seemed like an equally good option), Oz raised his eyes as far as the Marrok's shoulder. "I was going out with one of her best friends."

Standing near the motel room door, Charles seemed to twitch involuntarily. "Best friend?"

"One of them. I didn't really swing in the direction of the other one. Don't swing?" Oz said, talking to one of the distant walls. If he survived this, he promised himself he could have a good long freak-out tomorrow.

Without looking at either of them directly, Oz could tell that something had passed between the Marrok and Charles.

"That's a first," the Marrok said mildly. "So the wolf you killed, Veruca, she was one of the Slayers friends?"

Oz shuddered, eyes dropping to his hands. "No. Not at all. She's...she was the singer from another group at school."

"Where was her pack?" Charles asked.

"She didn't have one?" Brows furrowed, Oz tried to push past the cotton in his mind and remember his conversations with Veruca. "She...she had been attacked. And changed. But I don't remember ever mentioning any other wolves." Wait, that wasn't true. "No...she did. But not like...not like what I would think of as a pack. They sounded like encounters. Like they were just other wolves she knew, like how she knew the other local bands or other blond kids at school. Not like they were...they were..."

"Family?" the Marrok supplied.

"Yeah."

Oz's head hurt. Thinking so clearly about Veruca meant thinking clearly about a lot of things he'd been avoiding in the two months since he'd first... ‘Slept with her’ still felt too personal and intimate for what had actually happened. He desperately wanted to believe that it would have never happened if he'd been in control of the wolf.

"Where's your pack?" the Marrok asked, breaking through Oz's spiraling thoughts.

Oz's eyes swung up to meet his, before quickly dropping to the Marrok's shoulders again. "I didn't know any other werewolves until Veruca," he said, lying with ease.

His cousin Jordy was still only a child. Oz didn't blame him for what happened and neither should anyone else. If he'd been older and more mature, Oz would have never known that an entire branch of his family was furry. And if they were hiding it from the Marrok, there had to be a reason.

"What about the Slayer?"

Oz's brows furrowed.

"What's your relationship with her?"

"We're friends? I mean, even without dating Willow, she kinda saves our lives a lot. And when I got turned she didn't go for slay first, ask questions later. I really appreciated that."

Charles snorted.

"You knew her before you were turned?" the Marrok asked, the sense of him stronger than Oz had felt in the last five hours.

"Yeah."

"And her secret."

"Yeah."

"Fascinating."

Oz breathed in sharply as he was forcibly reminded of Xander during a nerd-out. At least the Marrok hadn't been eyeing a Twinkie as he said it.

"So you and the Slayer had a live-and-let-live policy?"

Oz shook his head. "I mean, yeah. I'm alive. But also, I was part of her team." At the rather heavy silence that followed, he added, "Me and Willow and Xander, we helped patrol and research the next Big Bad or whatever was going down."

"Xander is her watcher?" Charles asked.

"No, he's the best friend I don't swing to. Giles is the Slayer's watcher." Oz didn't know why they weren't calling Buffy by name, or why he was using everyone else's. His head hurt, his heart hurt all over again, and the low level fear he'd been living with since he'd ripped out Veruca's throat had been edging up the meter for hours. He was pretty sure he'd left "low" behind half a day ago. And he was really, really tired. Whatever energy he'd gotten from that nap in the car before the Marrok had appeared on the side of the road was long past gone.

Abruptly, Oz slipped bonelessly off the edge of the bed. It felt like someone had cut his strings. Even his eyes had slid closed, and were slow to open again. "Sorry," he mumbled. He reached behind himself to pull himself back up and stop annoying the two dominant (like really dominant) wolves in the room.

Which wasn't working either. Oz could feel his fear try to ratchet up another notch, but that cottony feeling was back and it couldn't be pushed through. "Sorry," he said instead, hoping they'd give him a pass. Hoping Charles was as much like Buffy as he felt.

The Marrok crouched in front of him, prompting Oz to actually hang his head so that their eyes wouldn't meet. They really were nearly the same height.

"Don't be sorry, pup. I did this. You need the rest."

Oz struggled to right himself, to keep his eyes. "But..."

"Your life is safe for a while yet. You need to rest," the Marrok said again.

Oz's body began to ripple and shake. Fur flowed freely over him as his bones cracked and reformed under his skin. It was pure, burning agony. Then suddenly it wasn't. Suddenly, in spite of the fur, it was like holding still under the surface of a swimming pool, feeling the sun's heat leach away from his body as cool and cooler water eddied around him in soothing ribbons. He'd never felt so good.

* * *

It wasn't the first time Bran or Charles had seen a wolf tainted by Hellmouth evil, but they were both disgusted by the boy's wolf all the same.

"This is why there are no packs allowed near Sunnydale," Bran said for his own benefit, Charles thought. "At least he can heal here."

"He's staying, then."

"For a little while, yes. He mentioned a band, but I never got to find out what he plays."

"He lied to you," Charles reminded his father.

Bran nodded. "He did. We'll work on that.

"In the meantime, I want you to find out who turned him and who turned Veruca. They lived in the same town. It was probably the same wolf, and I don't like rogues."

Fin[ite]


End file.
